I’ve made a few changes since the last changelog, lets hope I can remember everything.

Survival Server

• Updated main server, Java, minecraft server & Bungee
• Please welcome Bazurka to the PirateCraft moderation team! he is now Commodore (moderation)!
• Added Dynamic Render Distance plugin, this is a massive change to the server that I have wanted for many many years. The servers render distance has always been 6, so if you set your client to load 32 chunks, it will only allow loading 6, until today this is what everyone had and the only way to change it was to reload the server, 6 is fine so we have stayed at this for about 4 years now.
  • Dynamic render distance, means your (Per player) render distance can be changed LIVE!
  • You can check your view distance with /vdist and if its being throttled, there is also /vping for the plugins version of a ping.
  • TPS based render distance is enabled now, you will be playing at 6 render distance as you always have, but we have now have an option enabled that when TPS drops (Say from a large amount of people playing that night) to dynamically & automatically change peoples render distance to as low as 4, it will down scale automatically, and it will auto go back up to 6 when TPS increases back to normal.
  • Logging in render distance is set to 4, as soon as you log in, it will only load 4 chunk render distance around you, once you start moving, it will go up to 6! this should improve logging in speeds!
  • Teleport based render distance is set to 4, when teleporting you will load 4 chunks around you (for 3 seconds) and then it will go to 6 chunks, this should hopefully allow much quicker teleporting by loading a lot less information from server <-> client
  • AFK Render distance! Those selfish buggers that AFK to farm using precious server resources are now limited to 3 chunk view distance, you don’t need chunks if you are AFK, Hell Who thinks it should be less? Just a waste of resources on these people sitting afk, as soon as they leave AFK it’ll go back to 6.
  • Flying/Media role Sea Artist goes up! that’s right this dynamic render distance goes both ways! Doubles to a whopping 12 Chunks in each direction, specifically for taking screenshots & Video! Oh yes this is utterly beautiful! This will have to be a temporary role, we can’t have multiple people flying around with this just yet (Maybe after testing)
  • After testing is complete, this would make an amazing Contributor perk being able to load more chunks around you and bypassing any throttling when the TPS is low, but it would allow for easier AFK farming and spotting people sooner from a distance, may be unbalanced, tell me what you think, not enabled at present.
• Created new rank called “navigator” which just inherits ALL ship permissions, this can be temporarily given at ship battle events to use all ships, its got its own chat badge of a purple anchor to show who’s got it.
• Setup rank sync with Discord server to automatically give staff and contributors a discord rank to access channels automatically, you will have to be /discord link
• Updated the server list MOTD’s
  • mc.piratemc.com (Our main server address) now tells people to use 1.12.2
  • hub.piratemc.com (Creative) now has colors that match builders, random messages, hovering over the users online tells you whos online.
  • pvp.piratemc.com (PvP is currently down) has a message to tell peolpe its down atm
  • test.piratemc.com (test server) is also updated.
• Updated in-game /motd
• Nuked “Sea Artist” role to not have Contributor or Moderator permissions, this is the media role that we can temporarily give out for people to take screenshots or video, this rank also inherits permissions to have a view distance of 12, no longer has a blue username.
• Fixed build leaders being able to set craftsman rank temporarily and permanently to people, fixed admins being able to temporarily set helpers, craftsman, navigator & seaartist
• Did a mass /auc update with 60 Unique items.

Creative & Hub

• Updated main server, Java, and minecraft server.
• Added GoBrush & GoPaint for builders and Contributor ranks, these are some super powerful terrain and building tools, click them to watch videos on how to use, really really awesome plugins for building.

Discord

• Gave all channels icons to quickly figure out what is what, I have found after use its much easier to figure out what is what at a quick glance.
• Added Contributor channel, for Contributor ranks, this is a VIP area for Contributors to test out features early, I have also done 2 secret treasure hunts already in this channel.
• Ranks in-game are now synced automatically to the discord, so helper ranks, contributor ranks, moderator, builders, build leaders will all be automated into discord so they will get their rank and access to channels by just managing roles in-game
• Added moderation tools to Discord, filtering specific words
• Added Logging for deleted messages & Edited messages to stop abuse of tagging (Thanks Lego!)
• Added contributor role, removed roles we no longer use, and renamed a few.
• Fixed the colours of all the discord roles to match in-game roles.

Website

• Fixed navigation when scrolling, when you scroll the website now the navigation will be stickied to the top of the page.
• Reduced logo size
• Removed the 3 column layout and went to a 2 column layout so its not an information overload, and there is more space for content
• Reduced the Recent forum replies/threads & updated website groups to only show 5 items instead of 10 as everything is now packed into one column, I May remove the latest forum threads & replies and keep those just for the forum pages later.
• Added bigger header to pages & gave a horizontal rule below the titles
• Changed the padding for the container
• Added a better 404 page with search & formatting
• Hopefully fixed padding on mobile after re-sizing the navigation bar & logo.
• Updated dependencies
• Moved modal out of the nav so it works on more browsers
• Added changelog categories to the homepage to quickly go to that changelog category
• Updated PHP to version 7.1 (for some reason it was on 5.6 still?!) Website should load faster now.
• Fixed all PirateCraft custom skins working on our skins page https://piratemc.com/information/skins-textures/ these now all link correctly and have all been tested as well.
• Small change to online mobile checker https://piratemc.com/online/ auto sorted by putting staff at the top, padding added to buttons for mobile, added chrome theme support to be dark, reduced title size and removed UN-needed words.
• Started setup of a proper marketing software for newsletters (Not complete yet)
• Fixed 2 icons on the website & added custom tracking for marketing

Ship Battle this Saturday 9th 20:00 GMT / 15:00 EST / 12:00 PST

Maximus_Terragon (Maxy) has organized a ship battle Saturday 9th January at 8pm GMT/ 3pm EST / 12:00pm PST, this is some further information passed on from Maxy about the event.

/warp event has been set at the ‘Battle Bay’ (thanks romich)

Battle will last roughly 1 hour

• 20 minutes of fighting
• 10 minutes of repair time
• 20 minutes of fighting
• 10 minutes of repair time
• Sudden death (once you’re dead you can’t return to your ship)
  Ship with highest percentage of crew left at the end wins (unless the ship is disabled before that)

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Rules

• No teaming; one ship per team
• No limit on crew numbers, have as many or as few people as you want
• No submarines of any kind
• No limit on ship size
• NO BOARDING; including enderpearls
• Ships must not exceed y-level 100 (to fit through arch and to still be in pvp zone)
• No double cannons (sorry)
• No ‘box’ ships – it has to be semi-ship looking, don’t make boxes
• No ramming please – its a pain to separate the ships

Projectiles

• Cobblestone and melon seeds ONLY
• No TNT or explosives of any kind
• Breaking these rules WILL result in disqualification and a jail

Building Blocks

• Nothing with blast resistance of 30 or higher (including blast resistance of 30)
• In essence; no stone brick, obsidian, iron bar armour
• Only exception is Iron and Coal blocks for cannons
• If you want to ask me about a block, dm me, i may make a few exceptions

Tips

• Terracotta as armor, 2 layers on the important parts of the ship should be fine, 3 layers if you’re thinking of brawling
• Use wool and wood planks as a ‘damage sponge’ in areas that don’t have terracotta (screenshot below)
• Auto-cannons are great… until a single bit of redstone breaks and they become useless. Don’t over-rely on them
• Try to make sails – you would think putting wool behind the terracotta is a better idea, but in battles it shows that ships with sails do better as the wool is harder to hit
• Supply chests with wool, wood, terracotta, gunpowder, arrows, and cannon materials